


think how it wakes the seeds

by Keturagh



Series: False Fruit [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Elves cavorting in the woods, F/M, Fluff, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Slow Burn, Solavellan Hell, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:47:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21970897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keturagh/pseuds/Keturagh
Summary: The sound she makes is worshipful, and for once he does not mind.He is tugged into it too.
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas, Fen'Harel | Solas/Female Lavellan, Fen'Harel/Female Mage Lavellan, Fen'Harel/Lavellan, Lavellan/Solas (Dragon Age), solavellan - Relationship
Series: False Fruit [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1579504
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	think how it wakes the seeds

**think how it wakes the seeds — Futility, Wilfred Owen**

\--

He hears the heavy fall of the oak door slamming into place and swings his legs over the side of the couch. It is the breath that seeps under the door this morning; he has felt it too, growing in the heat of the sun on the mountainside. He did not know if she would feel it. But it is the earliest crest of dawn and the closing of the door to her chambers is loud in the stillness of the rest of the castle. Expelled from dreaming by a restlessness hours before, he has lain, waiting (telling himself he is not waiting) for the sound. The fall of her footsteps. The closing of her door.

He hears the echoes like she is passing straight through the great hall and he scrambles, first towards the rotunda’s egress, then he stops. Reconsiders. Walks swiftly towards the training yard door instead. He settles his vest around his shoulders as he walks. He ducks to lift his pack from where it slouches against the mural beside the tunnel. The tankard and the bone horn clatter, knock hollowly as he eases the pack over his shoulders.

He emerges from his door at the same time she exits hers.

Not that he planned such.

Listening. His hand on the knob. Forgetting to breathe, nervous.

She looks over at him, all caution and wary surprise, before she sees that it is him.

And then she removes the pieces of him that hurt with the way her face changes, brightens, and when she speaks it is the first song of morning.

“ _Solas_!” And even though they have shared so much together, the unrestrained joy impacting him now is an open and endearing shock. Her smile is easy, energetic, and even pleased. Pleased to see him. Pleased to be awake. Pleased by the warm turning of the earth, the exultant feeling in the air. She rushes down the stone steps and he watches her. They are being pulled apart by the distance, but he can still hear her, he walks quickly over the bridge, keeps her in sight, listens to her exclaim, “You felt it, too! Last night I was certain I’d… I’d burst, I don’t know. Just, can you just feel - it’s so clear up here. Do you feel that? Do you _feel_?”

And he tries to control the grin he feels growing on his lips, in his eyes, at how excited she is. He nods, considers, and then answers, “I feel it. You are right; it is strong.”  


He carries his voice down to where she’s standing; she beams up at him. Her arms are spread out, wide, side-to-side. She is loose and free in a way that is purely for herself. It is uncharacteristic — and the thought bites him, because of course it is his fault that her happiness is uncharacteristic in this place.

“Get down here fast, dreamer. We’ll just take the one.” He’s been invited to join her and he feels like he has stolen something so beautiful that he will clutch at it for the rest of his days.

When he reaches her she’s already led the stag from the stables, bridled, but not saddled. She reaches out to him. He boosts her easily enough (outwardly controlled, inwardly faint), and then mounts behind her. The long hair is bristly, scratching through his leggings. There is room for distance between their bodies, and he maintains it — she clicks, her thighs flex, and they are carried forward. As they pass the tavern she reins in, tilts her chin up and wonders aloud, “Does Sera feel it, you think?”  


Part of him stiffens against this possibility. But the gentler, less selfish man in him prevails in an instant. “It would be good if she allowed herself to feel this. Would you like me to go and see if she is willing, awake? I can rouse her.”

Pangara is quiet, for a moment. She gazes up at the tavern window. He feels her warring within herself. And then she makes a choice, and he is surprised that her choice gives him pause, because, he realizes, it disappoints him.

She slides her gaze straight ahead over the stag’s antlers. “No. Leave her.”

Flexing her thighs again and clicking her tongue, she spurs the stag forward. They are quiet together, and she is distant from him as they leave the yard and then the gate. He nods to the two guardsmen, she raises a hand in greeting. And as they cross the bridge, and the wind picks up and her shoulders loosen, and the hair at the nape of her neck pulls and willows in the breeze, and she breathes in sharply,through her nose, and he feels extraordinary — they open back up to the morning. To the warmth of it. To the sun cresting the horizon like a guilty lover. The dawnstar lingering at the hilly crest of frost. And everything around and under and over them thrums and whispers, “ _Spring. Spring. Spring._ ”

Soon they are galloping. She is laughing. Solas reaches out and his arms encircle her waist, she leans them both forward, holding the reins loose, her back is warm against his chest. She whoops. He is smiling open-mouthed, foolish, chin nuzzling against her neck despite himself. She arches back against him, exalts, and they are over the bridge and she veers them to the woodland road, to bring them quickly down into the treeline where already morning sounds of blackcap, warbler, finch, and wren welcome them, embrace them, invite and sing out to the turning year.

When in the shade of trees, the night seems to reclaim them. The sun is still too weak to warm the snow. They slow to a sedate pace. A stick breaks to the left of the trail; a badger, he sees, just as it flashes into shadow. The stag startles and its flesh beneath their legs trembles and ripples. She croons low, settling the stag’s dancing hooves with subtle suggestions of her knees and heels. Solas sits back, carefully away from her, and then lowers a hand to pat the stag’s back.

“Your carriage has become quite skilled.”

The rolling _phwoo-phwoo-hoo_ call of a grace owl reaches them through the trees. Her eyes are crinkling, a green that dazzles him even beside this canopy. “Kind way to say that I have slightly less chance of breaking my neck now. The _mood_ in this _son-of-a_. I never thought I’d meet a thing with so little shame in such a cruel temper.” The stag snorts, and they both chuckle. Then they fall into an easy silence, passing under the thick, stiff-bristled trees.

He shifts his shoulders down and back, tilts his chin up and lets his eyes close. How many springs had he let let pass without heeding this call? Dismissing this chorus? The sun pot-bellied on the horizon before he noticed that the world had turned?

He opens his eyes and she is looking back at him. He cannot read her expression. Then she points. The woods might seem still as the sky lightens and the stars, through the branches, dim. But she notices, as he does, the flickering of each branch, and he follows her gesture to see where a bluebird with brilliant plumage has settled on the pine. He turns back to her and then his gaze flicks up and he lifts his hand, points beyond her head. She turns and breathes in, sharp, stunned. The owl is massive. They do not reach this size in the lower lands. It is set back from them, deep in the trees, and its talons scrape when it flexes its grip. Gold, glowing eyes turn to view them, its head swiveling smooth and liquid, somber. It blinks. Its wings unfurl. Rolling like a mist down the mountainside, it bounces from the branch and into the air, ghosting into the darkness of the deeper forest.

The sound she makes is worshipful, and for once he does not mind.

He is tugged into it too.

It is when the sun crests enough to break through the canopy and dot the ground with shifting shadows that they realize they have arrived. It is no specific place, but he sees she recognizes it around the same time he does. Maybe a little delayed. Drawn from their separate thoughts, they smile at one another, each a little shy.  
She slides from the stag’s back. He dismounts and she reaches up to steady him on his feet, though he does not need the help. Her fingers press the crude stitching of his vest. She pulls at a loose string. He feels less steady than when his feet first touched the ground.

She steps away and her smile grows broad as she looks around at the trees, the sounds of the birds, the moving chaos of light and air in the dawn.

Then she reaches into the pouch at her waist and pulls out a hard, round cake. Breaks it in half and offers it to him. The scent is deeply aromatic, herbal. They raise their halves to press back together, eyes meeting. He sees the honey gold of her cheeks deepen, tries to match the red to something in his mind so that he can recall this moment again later with ease. He fights the urge to step closer to her, to lower his mouth over hers.

“En annar enanalsulahna,” she says. To the year’s gifted song.

His lips quirk; he bows his head slightly, to her. They eat their portions, turning to walk side by side.

_Warm. Warm. Warm,_ says the breeze that shakes the squirrels from their trees.

The stag digs at the snowy earth behind them. It scrapes up a smell of soil and loam.

The chatter above them is raucous now. It is a thousand thousand calls. It is threads of daylight piercing down a shrieking, vibrating song through every living thing. He feels the Veil bow and tremble against it; the temptation of light, the tidal crush of a heat that pours once more into the earth.

He has her on his arm. They stride together. Their feet could leave the ground.

She rests her head against his arm.

He swallows. His eyes close once more.

She breaks from him. It is sudden. She runs ahead and leaps, twisting her torso in the air. She spins on landing, breaths coming light and fast. She laughs up at the trees and he is stunned, his hands twitching, staring at her, unable to think or move or breathe.

It is like it was before. He never thought to see it… Home, inside her. Home. And as it should have been. Free.

The way her arms have weight and strain and heaviness in them, as she moves her body in the swollen song of morning - it wrestles within him. He does not move, rooted, trying not to betray the guilty mixture of fascination, aching melancholy, and arousal thudding within him; he is enraptured, the ground warms beneath his feet.  


She moves absolutely without care for him. She is entirely her own. Inhabits a space that is deeply internal, moved by the reaching season wrapping its arms around her. She claps, twists, stretches. Moves slow and deliberate, muscles taut, then flows with grace into a step that leads him to follow her, padding, over fallen branches and around outcropping rocks. She leaps up and grabs a low-hanging branch and just hangs, breathing hard. Drops of dew, melted snow, bounce and drop around her ears and make rivers down her hands, wrists, arms. Her head is tilted back and dappled in the sun.

She releases the branch and drops. Crouches. Sits, and then rocks back, pulling the air deep into her chest, sweat at her hairline and trickling down her throat. She is as unguarded as he has ever seen her.

He hangs back, reverent also, in his own way, in this mood of change and newness. He leans back against the mean bark of a pine, and the vibration of life travels through his body - oozing sap and the scritching claws of birds and the song filling, filling him.

His eyes open when he feels her hands. She weaves her fingers around his. Grips her palms against his, then slackens this feeling. And they are filled with each other’s pulses. The green rising, the sun now mounted into the air, and the trees unbearably alive and busy and feeling a promise in the breeze, the breeze that has gentled and now urges and entices everywhere it touches: _Now. Now._

There is no time but the moving of the earth and the sun and the air and the song. Their hands entwine and hold and they forget to look away, and this touch becomes dance and song and pulse and walk. Tree and wing. Snowmelt and the heart of fire that now rushes between them in the wind, moves her hair, rustles his clothing: across from one another, and deep in the feeling, the call.

After the crescendo, he leans forward. He presses his lips on the salt of her brow.

He hears her breathe and her eyes seem pressed shut tight. But when she laughs, he knows she watches him still. She's spying on his smile; her eyes are just a little open.


End file.
